Come with us – let's enjoy our world together

UK : Cornwall : Trengwainton Garden #1

In the hills behind the Cornish coastal town of Penzance, in the small village of Madron, is the National Trust Property of Trengwainton Garden. Although the manor house at the top of the garden is still a private residence, the garden is open to the public. We walked up the long gentle slope of this rather narrow garden by a winding path through dense plantings; we returned by the main driveway bedecked with Rhododendron on one side and a small stream planted with bog plants on the other. The moorland misty rain had returned, but that didn’t dampen our enjoyment of this lovely garden.

The unusual Fuchsia excorticata is a native plant of New Zealand. Sometimes known in Cornwall by the common name of ‘Sunburn Tree’, the trunk of this large fuchsia is characterised by its red peeling bark. This flower has an unusual blue pollen. The flowers are followed by dark purple, almost black berries, which some people say are delicious either raw or cooked.

This property, not open to the public, was once the residence of the powerful and very wealthy Cornish Arundell Family, From small beginnings in the early 1200’s, when their only possession was the manor of Treloy in the parish of St Columb Major, the Arundells reached the height of their wealth and influence in the late sixteenth century when this house was built. By then the family owned twenty-eight manors in Cornwall as well as manors and other properties in Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire.

The house was altered and extented in the 18th and 19th centuries and is now a Grade II listed building. In 1814, this estate was bought by a Jamaican sugar plantation owner, Rose Price. However, by 1833, his fortunes were diminished when his slaves in Jamaica were freed by the Emancipation Act. In 1867, the house was bought by the Bolitho family. Members of that family still live here.

The gardens were given to the National Trust in 1961 and are very well cared for by that organisation. We’ll explore a very different part of this garden in our next Cornwall episode.